These are issues that are faced by classical musicians, and others, WRT dance. Dance seems most effective when the music is written as dance music. Great dance music doesn't need dance to be effective, and some music is inappropriate for dance. I think the same relates to contemporary electronic music too. I'm not saying that only dance music is suitable for visual art, but some music isn't.

Interesting, can you site examples?

Not that I disagree, just interested in what music could not be enhanced with a well-thought out visual performance...

I like playing with Quartz Composer which is part of the Apple development install. It's a modular video synth that allows you to easily make animations that react to MIDI controllers and audio inputs.

It's fun but I don't have projectors or anything. I just do it for fun.
I used to do After effects and video editing for tv but it's too much work to me and less fun than making sounds.

I would like to incorporate video into my music but it would need to be fun and not require tons of time.

What realy impressed me lately on the topic of visuals and sounds is this piece/demo by Dave Griffiths;
click here (large-ish file)

There the visuals aren't realy following the music though; they are a representation of the process that generates the music as well as the interface to manipulate it.

Wow, that was like the Borg Keyboard meets the Tempest arcade game! I really liked it.

For something completely different from that though, you might want to check out the blobman video segments I've been making. I am new to music and video making (two weeks now), so pardon me if its a little primitive. The blobman and blobwoman are poseable figures made by Peter Houston for the photorealistic rendering and animation program called POV-Ray. I figured out how to animate them and time them to the music using ChucK to generate the music and the video source code. Someone on this forum said it was like a planting or harvesting ritual, so I'm going to call the final video "The Harvest". It has a scrolling fft that looks like an agriculture plot with the blobpeople moving up and down to the frequency of the music in a way that looks like harvesting crop. You can see it on my music site at:

My main goal in making the video was to have fun while also providing a freeware music video solution for anyone to use. Both ChucK and POV-Ray are freeware and run on almost any modern computer so this way anyone with the time and motivation can take my source code and modify it to their creative delight. So far I am up to blobman 7, and I plan to render a longer and better sequenced video for the final one today. Oh, and the blobpeople said to say "Hello"... They are busy rendering at the moment but later they will perform for you, haha.

A very interesting Freedom Odds Music site, I must say, Inventor. A lot to explore.

Most of the visualisations made by current media-players are quite boring imo.
Too much a simulation of the old fluid projections of the 70's..
To find The Bomb in the DOS days was quite exciting, because it was also realtime interactive with the keyboard.
But it was restricted to a 320x200 fullscreen mode.

And I don't think a visualisation should always being following the actual sound-data.
Let's start with a single bitmap, as a background during the whole song. It could be enough as visual.
Then, one could sync the changing moments in a track by modifying the bitmap or showing another one.
This seems like a slideshow, but even if so, it's a programmed visualisation as well._________________0.618033988

Exactly. So it would be quite clumsy to use hundreds of frames with the same picture.
Moments of change could be the more classic ones, like refrain, chorus, break, etc.
Or, more electronic, change of modulation, replacing a sample, changing the speed, muting a channel._________________0.618033988

A very interesting Freedom Odds Music site, I must say, Inventor. A lot to explore.

Thanks, SamZen, I had fun making it. It gets about 400 hits a month, directed mostly from electro-music.com posts, so you know there's lots of folks reading and listening and downloading. Long live freeware!

You're quite right. Because the soundtrack has in fact nothing to do whatsoever with the movie.
Of course in the production one can sync some moments of change in the process.
But it's an addition to the experience, not an illustration to things that already are seen.

This is valid the other way around as well. Heavy pictures added to heavy music.

A very boring thing is to see a report in the news from Paris, with the obvious French accordeon in the background..

I have HTML disabled so I didn't see the tube directly, but your example offers a serie of nice Koyaanisqatsi versions by the way.._________________0.618033988

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